Thank you for this article! My daughter bought a used car in great condition. The tires looked brand new as well. She bought it from a little old lady that rarely drove it. After her second blow out, we thought she must have run over something the first time, I remembered this story. Her tires were over 5 years old and this was an eye opener! I plan to pass this info on to as many people as possible.
We make our own delicious coffee each morning with tour $24 drip coffee maker. Just the way we like it. Plus no gas usage to get to WAWA or Starbucks, which has to add on at least 50 cents a day in this age of expensive gas.
If you are about to lose your income or insurance because of a disability or illnes you may want to consider the facts below before you walk away from your home, espesially if you may need medicaid or food stamp assistance, before the morgage company forecloses on it, espesially if you can't afford to file bankruptcy on the property.
1. The morgage company doesn't have to foreclose on the property, this means you have may end up with too many assets in your name if your paying rent and own a home too get medicaid or food stamps.
2. The need for life sustaining medication doesn't relieve you of the laws and rules of medicaid or the food stamp program, you are on your own.
3. Community clinics only help if you qualify and then their help is very limited and will not help you with a disablity case because most Community Clinic's can't afford to pay the high priced tests most people need for a disability case.
Please, please, please consider these things before you walk away and find you can't get the help you need.
Tara,
This is extremely offensive and ignorant of you to post here. Please save your selfish and uninformed opinions for yourself. Perhaps you should move to another province (or better yet, another Country) where you will not have to pay into the social support system that makes our province one of the safest and healthiest in the world.
I am sick and tired of people blaming ONLY speculation (like this article) for the rising oil prices. If you have any understanding of economics, you'll understand that without a market where speculation - or risk taking - can take place, oil prices will be much, much higher. Why? Fear. How? When a person who has access to oil - or better yet, possess rights to oil produced in the short term future - fears that there will not be enough supply of oil to meet demand, he will hold on to that oil for his own use. Either that, or he'll hold on to it knowing that he'll be able to get a higher price in the future if the supply shortage does materialize. Multiply by this many times over, and this exacerbates the already presumed short supply situation, and the price of oil will skyrocket.
A speculative market allows the concerned consumer to buy more oil on the open market from a willing seller. This alleviates some of his fear knowing that should his oil supply run out, there is a place where he can go out and get some oil. Yes, there's a risk he'll pay more for it in the future than he can now, but there's also the possibility that he may pay less (Google for Southwest Airline's experience with hedging against rising fuel prices).
The converse is also true. If the person with oil fears that the price of oil in the future will be much lower than today, he will attempt to unload his oil to minimize his potential losses. Again, multiply this many times over, and the price of oil collapses all because of fear. An open speculative market will allow the person to 1) sell the oil to someone who is optimistic about the future price of oil, or 2) hold on to the oil and risk loss in value or potentially capture the upside.
Yes, when asset prices rise, the market will draw in speculators. Look at what happened in the real estate market recently or the tech bubble of late '90s. Better yet, look at gold prices. But over time, an open market that allows speculation spreads risk across a large number of buyers and sellers. This means that the volatility in prices and demand/supply will be moderated, even if what we see looks like huge swings in prices. Believe me (or ask any competent economist), if an open market didn't exist, the flow of oil both out of the ground and from buyer to seller would effectively seize, and the world economy that is so dependent on oil would quite literally come to a halt. The number of "leaching" speculators is relatively small. It is the farmers, airlines, and various industries that wish to avoid wild swings in the price they pay for oil who are the major players in the market.
Don't let the ignorant voices shouting stoke your fear. Remember that the world is more nuanced than can be expressed by a slogan or a party line. If ever someone points to that one thing as the cause of a problem, it is usually wrong. When talking heads or ignorant writers do this, take it as an opportunity to find out what is REALLY going on. Civilized world depends mightily on educated citizens.
@JOE, that's a situation in which you'd want to be careful.
First, I've been a part of many real-estate transactions and a couple of them have had serious problems. I'd hate to lose a good friendship over an event during a sale which neither one of you can control to your mutual satisfaction. And unless YOU are paying your friend for his services, he is not working for YOU; he is working for the seller and agency.
In addition, your friend has to be careful that his "not professional" comments don't go as far as pointing out, for example, that the residents of the area are not the same religion as you or that they are primarily of other races have different national origins or economic circumstances. He also should not be passing judgment on problems with the house itself that he is not qualified to evaluate (that's one of the points the article writer made).
11. You are too much of a dreamer. As a former credit counselor, I used to have clients who started their own business because they just wanted to follow their dream - but where totally unrealistic about it being a viable venture. For example, one woman opened a yoga studio. Why? She loved yoga. But she was failing because her community was not so enthused or interested.
Rather than persisting in going back and forth, let me just say this:
The problem with the debt ceiling is not a financial one, it's a political one. Happily, I think the first people to feel the pain if the debt ceiling is not raised will be people who have considerable political power—major corporations, large numbers of small businessmen, etc. The upshot, I predict, will be that the political problem will be fixed quickly—well before there's any significant damage to the economy.
If you live in Dallas/Fort Worth or Austin, http://www.gordonandthewhale.com is an awesome way to get free tickets on a regular basis. I live in Austin, and I have the opportunity to see 4-8 free movies per month. I'm a little picky, so I usually only want to see 2 or 3 a month. All you do is sign up, wait a few days for an email with your tickets, and show up at the theater 45 mins early. I've even gotten a few free passes that can be used at any theater/time.
I am a "W" And I will say that the only thing I do constantly is I do tend to "OVERBUY" a certain item...If there are just a few, or if it is a great deal..I'll stock up. BUT I HATE SHOPPING. Always have + always will. I think the reason I over buy is because a) I hate shopping + this way I won''t have to go back as often, b) I do have plenty of storage room, c) a deal is a deal, if you can use it......YOU TELL ME !!!!
I don't think your lookiing at the numbers. We would have to immediately stop all defense spending and all medicare and medicaid spending in hopes of not hitting the debt ceiling which we are scheduled to hit by July at the latest. That means defaulting on military debt, stop paying all military salaries for the armed forces, stop funding the overseas operations completely, and we might barely squeek by except for the fact that those changes would mean that quarterly estimated tax payments would dramtically decrease because of all the people not receiving money and all the member of armed forces not getting paid anything. There is no trickle to keep things afloat we are speaking defaulting on military debt and laying off armed service members. Our system is based on the good faith of the US government. If no one is getting paid no one has any faith. This means no one would accept any cases from medicare and medicaid which would not be payig anything anyway. 1.6 trillion is the entire budget for health and defense not part of it. This is not a blip on the screen, this is the fall of Rome, complete destruction. Even if we split it up by laying off half of teachers nation wide, half of armed forces, all defense contractors, half of transportation, all of general government, we stopped welfare completely, and we told people they would only receive half of their Social Security checks we would still not cut enough to avoid hitting the debt ceiling this year because of the dramatic reduction in tax income from all the people who were laid off and are no longer paying taxes (not to mention all the people who provide services to employees that would lose their jobs because there would not be enough employees buying things to support their salaries). Like I said before we would under any circumstances likely increase the unemployement rate by at least another 18% in the best of scenarios. Though we would probably see a pretty large increase in profits for undertakers from all the destruction it would cause. As I mentioined before the other option is to default on our debt and watch the dollar become worthless paper. Both create massive death and destruction.
Sure. None of that is new to me. And yet, I still think it would play out about as I'm saying.
For example, it's not the contract workers who aren't getting paid—it's the contracting firms. Yes, there are many individuals overseas helping with war efforts, and they'd still be getting paid by the firms that employ them. Those firms, however, would be squealing because their invoices would be sitting unpaid in some queue at the Treasury. What are those firms going to do? Well, the same thing every other firm does when its bills don't get paid—they'd complain, they'd charge late fees, they'd sue, they'd eventually quit providing services (or else go bankrupt). But none of that causes a depression, nor does any of it cause the US to default on its debt. It probably wouldn't even hamper our war-fighting efforts in the short term. (It would eventually, when the companies decide that they'd rather not be in the business of providing services for a client that doesn't pay. Or go broke because they aren't getting paid. But that's a long way off. And the US could forestall such moves by trickling out just enough money to keep each individual firm from going bust.)
Ditto with health care. The US wouldn't be eliminating Medicare. It'd just be slow about paying its bills. What would doctors and hospitals do? Same as the military contractors—complaints, fees, lawsuits, and eventually going broke. VA hospitals would still pay their doctors and nurses, they'd just be late paying the pharmacies for drugs. What are the pharmacies going to do? Cut off drugs for injured vets? Eventually, perhaps, but most will just suck it up and wait for the political process to push through the needed fix (while leaning on their Senators to do just that).
Now, if things stretched on so long that large numbers of firms started going broke because they weren't getting paid, that'd be a big deal for the economy. But a few months of late and partial payments wouldn't harm the economy; it'd harm businesses who provide services for the government. Happily, the owners of such businesses are the sort of people who have political pull. They'd talk to their Congressmen and get things fixed quite quickly, long before the economy took much of a hit.
Thank you for this article! My daughter bought a used car in great condition. The tires looked brand new as well. She bought it from a little old lady that rarely drove it. After her second blow out, we thought she must have run over something the first time, I remembered this story. Her tires were over 5 years old and this was an eye opener! I plan to pass this info on to as many people as possible.
The stock market--if I could learn more about smart investing, I could maximize my investment protfolio
Spring cleaning is the end result of changing out the winter warm accessories for the springtime colors and textures.
♥ ♥This one gets bookmark status for me. Our family loves the movies. The word FREE is music to anyone's ears. There's nothing like the theater. ♥ ♥
We make our own delicious coffee each morning with tour $24 drip coffee maker. Just the way we like it. Plus no gas usage to get to WAWA or Starbucks, which has to add on at least 50 cents a day in this age of expensive gas.
Yes.
i have been going to movie prescreenings for a few years as well. one site that i visit often is fatwallet.com.
If you are about to lose your income or insurance because of a disability or illnes you may want to consider the facts below before you walk away from your home, espesially if you may need medicaid or food stamp assistance, before the morgage company forecloses on it, espesially if you can't afford to file bankruptcy on the property.
1. The morgage company doesn't have to foreclose on the property, this means you have may end up with too many assets in your name if your paying rent and own a home too get medicaid or food stamps.
2. The need for life sustaining medication doesn't relieve you of the laws and rules of medicaid or the food stamp program, you are on your own.
3. Community clinics only help if you qualify and then their help is very limited and will not help you with a disablity case because most Community Clinic's can't afford to pay the high priced tests most people need for a disability case.
Please, please, please consider these things before you walk away and find you can't get the help you need.
Oh boy, I can't remember the last time I exercised - guess I need to get away from the computer for a bit :) thanks for the mention!
Thanks for the link love Ashley!
I clean if I have time, but usually I don't have time! captainliss40(at)gmail(dot)com
Tara,
This is extremely offensive and ignorant of you to post here. Please save your selfish and uninformed opinions for yourself. Perhaps you should move to another province (or better yet, another Country) where you will not have to pay into the social support system that makes our province one of the safest and healthiest in the world.
Elaborating on what Bill said above:
I am sick and tired of people blaming ONLY speculation (like this article) for the rising oil prices. If you have any understanding of economics, you'll understand that without a market where speculation - or risk taking - can take place, oil prices will be much, much higher. Why? Fear. How? When a person who has access to oil - or better yet, possess rights to oil produced in the short term future - fears that there will not be enough supply of oil to meet demand, he will hold on to that oil for his own use. Either that, or he'll hold on to it knowing that he'll be able to get a higher price in the future if the supply shortage does materialize. Multiply by this many times over, and this exacerbates the already presumed short supply situation, and the price of oil will skyrocket.
A speculative market allows the concerned consumer to buy more oil on the open market from a willing seller. This alleviates some of his fear knowing that should his oil supply run out, there is a place where he can go out and get some oil. Yes, there's a risk he'll pay more for it in the future than he can now, but there's also the possibility that he may pay less (Google for Southwest Airline's experience with hedging against rising fuel prices).
The converse is also true. If the person with oil fears that the price of oil in the future will be much lower than today, he will attempt to unload his oil to minimize his potential losses. Again, multiply this many times over, and the price of oil collapses all because of fear. An open speculative market will allow the person to 1) sell the oil to someone who is optimistic about the future price of oil, or 2) hold on to the oil and risk loss in value or potentially capture the upside.
Yes, when asset prices rise, the market will draw in speculators. Look at what happened in the real estate market recently or the tech bubble of late '90s. Better yet, look at gold prices. But over time, an open market that allows speculation spreads risk across a large number of buyers and sellers. This means that the volatility in prices and demand/supply will be moderated, even if what we see looks like huge swings in prices. Believe me (or ask any competent economist), if an open market didn't exist, the flow of oil both out of the ground and from buyer to seller would effectively seize, and the world economy that is so dependent on oil would quite literally come to a halt. The number of "leaching" speculators is relatively small. It is the farmers, airlines, and various industries that wish to avoid wild swings in the price they pay for oil who are the major players in the market.
Don't let the ignorant voices shouting stoke your fear. Remember that the world is more nuanced than can be expressed by a slogan or a party line. If ever someone points to that one thing as the cause of a problem, it is usually wrong. When talking heads or ignorant writers do this, take it as an opportunity to find out what is REALLY going on. Civilized world depends mightily on educated citizens.
@JOE, that's a situation in which you'd want to be careful.
First, I've been a part of many real-estate transactions and a couple of them have had serious problems. I'd hate to lose a good friendship over an event during a sale which neither one of you can control to your mutual satisfaction. And unless YOU are paying your friend for his services, he is not working for YOU; he is working for the seller and agency.
In addition, your friend has to be careful that his "not professional" comments don't go as far as pointing out, for example, that the residents of the area are not the same religion as you or that they are primarily of other races have different national origins or economic circumstances. He also should not be passing judgment on problems with the house itself that he is not qualified to evaluate (that's one of the points the article writer made).
11. You are too much of a dreamer. As a former credit counselor, I used to have clients who started their own business because they just wanted to follow their dream - but where totally unrealistic about it being a viable venture. For example, one woman opened a yoga studio. Why? She loved yoga. But she was failing because her community was not so enthused or interested.
Rather than persisting in going back and forth, let me just say this:
The problem with the debt ceiling is not a financial one, it's a political one. Happily, I think the first people to feel the pain if the debt ceiling is not raised will be people who have considerable political power—major corporations, large numbers of small businessmen, etc. The upshot, I predict, will be that the political problem will be fixed quickly—well before there's any significant damage to the economy.
good post! we get tons of free movie screenings in LA. I should take advantage of it, but the showtimes are so limited.
"Obama stated, that he wanted gasoline prices to hit 8 to 10 dollars a gallon? "
Got a reference for that?
If you do, I'd love to see it.
For New York City I highly suggest to arrive at least an hour (if not two for major blockbusters).
You are welcome!
For those in the Philadelphia area, the blog Philebrity -- http://www.philebrity.com -- occasionally offers free screening tickets as well.
If you live in Dallas/Fort Worth or Austin, http://www.gordonandthewhale.com is an awesome way to get free tickets on a regular basis. I live in Austin, and I have the opportunity to see 4-8 free movies per month. I'm a little picky, so I usually only want to see 2 or 3 a month. All you do is sign up, wait a few days for an email with your tickets, and show up at the theater 45 mins early. I've even gotten a few free passes that can be used at any theater/time.
I am a "W" And I will say that the only thing I do constantly is I do tend to "OVERBUY" a certain item...If there are just a few, or if it is a great deal..I'll stock up. BUT I HATE SHOPPING. Always have + always will. I think the reason I over buy is because a) I hate shopping + this way I won''t have to go back as often, b) I do have plenty of storage room, c) a deal is a deal, if you can use it......YOU TELL ME !!!!
I don't think your lookiing at the numbers. We would have to immediately stop all defense spending and all medicare and medicaid spending in hopes of not hitting the debt ceiling which we are scheduled to hit by July at the latest. That means defaulting on military debt, stop paying all military salaries for the armed forces, stop funding the overseas operations completely, and we might barely squeek by except for the fact that those changes would mean that quarterly estimated tax payments would dramtically decrease because of all the people not receiving money and all the member of armed forces not getting paid anything. There is no trickle to keep things afloat we are speaking defaulting on military debt and laying off armed service members. Our system is based on the good faith of the US government. If no one is getting paid no one has any faith. This means no one would accept any cases from medicare and medicaid which would not be payig anything anyway. 1.6 trillion is the entire budget for health and defense not part of it. This is not a blip on the screen, this is the fall of Rome, complete destruction. Even if we split it up by laying off half of teachers nation wide, half of armed forces, all defense contractors, half of transportation, all of general government, we stopped welfare completely, and we told people they would only receive half of their Social Security checks we would still not cut enough to avoid hitting the debt ceiling this year because of the dramatic reduction in tax income from all the people who were laid off and are no longer paying taxes (not to mention all the people who provide services to employees that would lose their jobs because there would not be enough employees buying things to support their salaries). Like I said before we would under any circumstances likely increase the unemployement rate by at least another 18% in the best of scenarios. Though we would probably see a pretty large increase in profits for undertakers from all the destruction it would cause. As I mentioined before the other option is to default on our debt and watch the dollar become worthless paper. Both create massive death and destruction.
Sure. None of that is new to me. And yet, I still think it would play out about as I'm saying.
For example, it's not the contract workers who aren't getting paid—it's the contracting firms. Yes, there are many individuals overseas helping with war efforts, and they'd still be getting paid by the firms that employ them. Those firms, however, would be squealing because their invoices would be sitting unpaid in some queue at the Treasury. What are those firms going to do? Well, the same thing every other firm does when its bills don't get paid—they'd complain, they'd charge late fees, they'd sue, they'd eventually quit providing services (or else go bankrupt). But none of that causes a depression, nor does any of it cause the US to default on its debt. It probably wouldn't even hamper our war-fighting efforts in the short term. (It would eventually, when the companies decide that they'd rather not be in the business of providing services for a client that doesn't pay. Or go broke because they aren't getting paid. But that's a long way off. And the US could forestall such moves by trickling out just enough money to keep each individual firm from going bust.)
Ditto with health care. The US wouldn't be eliminating Medicare. It'd just be slow about paying its bills. What would doctors and hospitals do? Same as the military contractors—complaints, fees, lawsuits, and eventually going broke. VA hospitals would still pay their doctors and nurses, they'd just be late paying the pharmacies for drugs. What are the pharmacies going to do? Cut off drugs for injured vets? Eventually, perhaps, but most will just suck it up and wait for the political process to push through the needed fix (while leaning on their Senators to do just that).
Now, if things stretched on so long that large numbers of firms started going broke because they weren't getting paid, that'd be a big deal for the economy. But a few months of late and partial payments wouldn't harm the economy; it'd harm businesses who provide services for the government. Happily, the owners of such businesses are the sort of people who have political pull. They'd talk to their Congressmen and get things fixed quite quickly, long before the economy took much of a hit.